All's a Garden

I've actually been wearing some really cute outfits lately, but I've been too busy/lazy to take photos. My garden is getting plenty of attention though. I'm at the point where little wildlife is coming to live in and around the garden and that pleases me more than I can say. It was one of the things I'd been hoping for so it's wonderful that little creatures are making a home there now.



Toads are some of my favourite animals as it is, but itty bitty toadlets really take the cake. They're just so tiny and hoppy and cute! Perfect for eating all the little insects in my garden that might be harmful to my plants. My compost pile has been attracting other animals, mainly Northern Red-Belly snakes, my most favourite Ontario species of small snake. They're completely harmless and don't get much bigger than the one in my photo below.



They're another fantastic species to have in and around a garden because they mainly feed on slugs and small snails. I found this little fella living in the dirt directly inside my compost heap. There must be plenty of delicious things for it and its little snake friends in there because I've seen one almost every time I'm out there adding to my heap or turning the compost. I hope you are having a good week. Cheers!

Fishing Style

It seems my blog is being taken over by photos of fishing lately, which is likely going to be par for the course for the rest of the summer, if I have anything to do with it. My parents and I went for a short spot of fishing last evening. I caught four catfish - or barbotte as we call them here - while my parents kept catching each other haha... the perils of casting too near one another!

As you can see, I was having a wonderful time. And that I go fishing in white skirted outfits, like a boss. I actually scrambled and climbed all the way to the log on the point in the first photo, and stood in the water there for a bit and fished from there. It feels so good to be back here, with family, doing the things I love. Hope your weekend is going well so far. Cheers!

Fish Fish Fish

I love fishing, but haven't been able to go anywhere near as much as I'd have liked over the last few years. Now that I'm living in the country again, I plan to take full advantage of that and make up for lost time. I'm off to a good start too! My first fishing trip with my parents ended with my catching four large northern pike.



My father didn't catch anything, and my mom only caught a small perch - not even large enough to keep. I guess I just had the fish mojo on my side that afternoon. I cleaned the first pike myself and we fried it up right there on the side of the lake and ate it right up. Fresh fish is delicious!

It feels so good to be able to get back into this hobby again. I went again by myself a few days later down in a small bay by the public docks here in town. It was peaceful and so nice to just be outside and let time slide by languidly. I'm so glad summer is here and that I am spending it how I am! Cheers!

Snakes in a Kitchen

Tomorrow makes it a week my having lived in my new apartment and it's really starting to feel like home now. I still have some boxes to unpack, but most of it is photos and nicknacks, nothing particularly crucial to my ability to live in my home. I have a lot of organizing ahead of me, but at least I don't live in box-central anymore. My snake babies don't seem to have been at all affected by the move either, and that's relieving.

 Top - Gifted from Heather

Skirt - Thrifted from Value Village

Ball Pythons - Mother Nature

Even my toes are multicoloured! I really don't look like what most people probably think a snake enthusiast should look haha... I stopped worrying what people thought of my appearance a long time ago though, and it'd be hard to go back to blandness.

It's hard to believe I've had these boys for about four years now. They're such sweeties, as are all my snakes. My animal room is all set up for them now, and I just need to unpack my sewing machine and set up my craft station and the room will essentially be finished too. I love that I'm a lady who sews and keeps snakes, who loves shoes and collects animal furs and other odd 'morbid' bits and bobs. A personality made of bright juxtapositions. Speaking of which, I have more boxes of bones to unpack. Cheers!

New View

Well the move went mostly without a hitch. One of my tarantulas did get a foot pinched near the tip, but I'm hoping once it molts that it will be okay. If not, I may have to take some drastic action, but I'll cross that bridge when I reach it. I'm still up to my eyeballs in boxes and chaos but at least I'm 'home'. I've spent the last two nights sleeping at my grandmother's until there's some modicum of sense in this place but I think tonight I'll finally be able to sleep here.



This is the view directly outside my door. No busy street, no buses, no homeless people, no trash bins. Just peaceful field and forest. I am near the highway, but frankly it's nothing in comparison to when I lived just two blocks behind a superhighway haha. It's going to take some getting used to, but I believe I'll be very happy here. I'm looking forward to the summer with friends and family, and starting school in the fall. I hope you are all having a good week. Cheers!

Moving Time

I've gone silent again the last few weeks. My life has been rather stressful and topsy turvy. I've elected to move early, for several reasons. A large one being that my apartment has an increasingly serious cockroach problem and I am not willing to wait around another month as it just gets worse. My parents have found me a wonderful little two bedroom apartment on the edge of town, very near my grandmother's, which I'm very happy about. The official move is Tuesday, so most of my belongings are already packed up.

I have been up to things other than stressing though. I baked up a Chocolate Guinness Cake with Cream Cheese Icing back around St-Patty's day. It's the third time I make the recipe and it's amazing every time, probably one of my most favourite cakes. I also finished up this round of belly dance classes. I'm really going to miss dancing with my ladies, but it's time to move on.



I met Laura way back when we both started taking belly dance classes in January of 2012. I thought she looked like a really groovy lady, and like someone I'd like to get to know. So I wrote up my name and number on a piece of paper and introduced myself, saying I'd like to try and be friends. It may have been dorky, but it worked, and we're great friends now. I'm really going to miss her, and my other friends here. But there are plenty of people in Sturgeon who are looking forward to having me there, old friends I'll be able to catch up with and strengthen those relationships. My future is looking really good. I'm about to head out and say goodbye to some more of my friends now though. I hope you are all having a lovely Easter weekend. Cheers!

Too Good to be True

Well then. I had hoped to share the happy news of my being hired on as a bread baker at a bakery. Except they let me go before I'd even properly started working there. Which is really a shame because I enjoyed the work I did have a chance to do before they cut me. Ugh. Now my life is upside down all over again and I'm just trying to keep afloat. It's hard not to second-guess myself and blame myself for all the bad things happening, there's definitely nobody else responsible for this situation but me. I'm starting to go a little stir-crazy, and losing hope. I know things will work out eventually but that doesn't make this any easier or less stressful. And when it looks like this outside...



It's rather difficult to get myself out there. I like to walk my stress off, but who wants to go walk in the snowpocalypse?! Or the ensuing slushy hell that follows. I'm doubting my choices, my decisions, my actions, and there's nobody I can really turn to for solid advice in this kind of situation. I love my parents, but they're even worse at such matters than I am. It's times like these that I feel really bitter about being alone, it's so much harder when you don't have someone at your side. Oh well. I'll just have to press on, because there isn't any choice. Cheers...

Fuzzy Wuzzy

I spent last winter with a scarf wrapped around my head because I couldn't find a hat that satisfactorily kept my ears warm. Not so this winter! I bought these earmuffs way back in early September, knowing they would be perfect once things got chilly, and wearing them always makes me happy. Other people love them too - or so I assume - because the moment they spot my fuzzy muffs people start to smile. They are rather preposterous but that's part of why I love them.

Fox Fur Earmuffs - Trading Post on Highway 17

Neckwarmer - Gift from the lovely Anne

Leather jacket - Danier

Sweater - Thrifted from Value Village

Skirt - Thrifted from the Salvation Army

Boots - Thrifted from Value Village

Since I've stopped working in an office, my form of dress has started to change again. I hadn't realized how much my job influenced my style. With having a strict uniform at the Cordon Bleu and just wearing basics in the kitchen at work, it's got me gravitating to outfits that really bring me pleasure during my free time.

I'm starting to feel like I have too much clothing. Most of it goes unworn, languishing in my closet and drawers. I sense another intense wardrobe purge is coming on, but it's going beyond that. I just have too much stuff in general. So many things just weighing me down, things I don't actually need.

My priorities are changing with me as I grow. While I have no real interest in living a completely minimalistic lifestyle, I do feel like a lot of what I keep is being kept for the wrong reasons. How much do my childhood mementos really mean to me if they're buried in a box in the storage closet? I've been carting some of this stuff around with me for so many years, but I never stopped to think why I was keeping it. This winter is going to hold more changes for me, and I'm hoping come spring that I will have managed to shed a lot of this excess stuff. I hope you're having a really great weekend so far, I know I'm enjoying mine. Cheers!

A Fresh Start and More Pastries

Today I start my new job. I've been hired on as a Line Cook in a new Italian restaurant that just opened. I've never worked in a legit kitchen before - the closest to that was working in a sketchy pizza shop in high school - so I have a lot to learn, but I'm excited. This is going to be challenging, and exhausting, and stressful. But I am so ready for this. It's what I want, and I'm still amazed this is my life now.

In just a few more weeks, I will have finished - and hopefully graduated with my certificate - from the Basic Pastry course at the Ottawa Cordon Bleu. I'm sad thinking about it being nearly over already, because I'm enjoying it so much. I really think I'm eventually going to go back and at least do the Intermediate Pastry level too, probably in July if I can swing it. Here are some more of the tasty things I've been making in class over the past few weeks.



Above are a tarte soufflée filled with the strawberry coulis that you can see below it. I was surprised with how well my soufflée turned out, considering they're such fragile things and I'd never made one before. Below here you can see a not-quite-perfect gratin aux fruits. I should have cut the berries up a little more, so they wouldn't show through the light pastry cream like they did.



This Christmas Log is pretty self-explanatory. I find it rather gaudy but I suppose most Christmas-themed things will be. It was really tasty, and I've got a half-finished one in my freezer for when my parents come up to visit. The Succès pastry below was a delicious almond overload. Layers of almond buiscuit, with almond buttercream and toasted almonds pressed into the sides.



This miroir aux cassis (a blackcurrant mousse cake) is probably my favourite so far. It was sooo delicious! The only bummer about all this is that I don't have a lot of the required tools to make most of this stuff at home. Looks like I'm going to have to acquire some entremets rings and tarte moulds. I hope you have a really groovy Monday and a good week. Cheers!

Ignorance May Be Bliss

But existing in blissful ignorance isn't living, it's just ignorance. I'm seeing so many people who choose to deny life as it is, to live their lives with their heads in the sand. Sometimes their form of ignorance is religion, when for others it's substance abuse, or losing themselves in the bubble-world of a relationship. And I can honestly see the appeal there, in something that promises to make all the scary things go away - or at least seem that way. But pretending the storm on the horizon isn't there isn't going to stop the rain.

It just seems so weak resorting to that kind of behavior. A coward's way out. It's especially disappointing to see people who's opinions I used to value existing like that, now that I'm more aware of such things. I'm not a deep thinker, I'm not a genius and I know that. I'm a pretty simple person. But it just seems so stupid to live like that. To ignore the obvious and keep riding that speeding train toward the broken bridge up ahead. Hiding in a church, inside a chemical high, in the arms of a lover, that's not the way to go.



While I can understand that change is frightening, the reality is that it's inevitable. Things are going to change sooner or later, whether you want them to or not. I just think it's better to be the catalyst for that change, to be in control, rather than simply duck down and let things go and just be along for the ride. The later might be easier now but it's going to be a lot more difficult dealing with the fallout in the future. My hatches are going to be battened down when that storm hits, I will be ready to face it and get through it.

I've been plowing along through life alone these last few years, and while it's been difficult and confusing and frightening, I've never gone so far as to just ignore the reality of life's struggles as my actual lifestyle. It's one thing to take the time to enjoy a little escape, let your mind free itself from worries and stress, and another entirely to live in that world of oblivion everyday and call it reality.

I think the worst thing about all of this is how so many of those people with their heads in the sand are quick to try and pull you down with them. As if their "reality" is the only one that can possibly be true and you're a fool not to live that way. But I don't need the comfort of a fictitious god figure or the numbing properties of a substance to get through this life. I still have so much to learn, but I know that much at least.

I'm going to face this life and all it can throw at me head on, with confidence in myself. Because the feelings of safety and confidence brought forth through religions and substances and dependent-relationships are not going to cut it. I've been standing on my own two feet this long, I'm not about to get down on my knees and jam my head in the sand with the rest of them. I'm better than that. And I think they are too, if they just made the effort and faced life as it is and not how they wish it were. 



So while I am still filled with a lot of fears and doubts about my future, I'm okay with that. I understand that it's just a part of life, and that it will also reward me with feelings of joy and comfort and safety when I work towards those things as goals. Nobody has any say in how my life will turn out but me, and I'm not about to throw that away for some outward source of temporary false comfort. You can live with your rose-tinted glasses on but the world isn't all pink. I like it in every shade, even the darker ones, because it makes the high points all the better. I'm going to try my best not to dwell on others' mistakes - or my own - but to learn from them and move on to grow and progress, as awkward and uncomfortable as that can be. Because I am alive. I am awake. And I'm not letting that go.

Past Pandemonium

I can't believe I never got around to posting my photos from the Pandemonium Festival! Apparently I just take forever to do just about everything these days, unless it involves food or laundering my school uniform. So here, months after the fact, are the photos (a whole whack of them) from my time spent with my wonderful friends Becky and Marty at the Pandemonium 2012 music festival back in August.

I consider this to have been my very best and most favourite festival experience so far, in the few years I've been attending. It's one of those times that will stay with me until my very last, a joyous time I take out and turn around in my hands and smile in gladness, knowing it is mine and no one can take it away. I love my friends, so very dearly, and I love that we shared this experience together. I hope you may all know such joy and goodness. Cheers!